Diamonds Everywhere

As a child, I thought diamonds were everywhere.  The graphite on the sidewalks in North Braddock, the byproduct of the Edgar Thompson steel mill, shone like tiny jewels when the sun was on them.  But the most precious-seeming stones were those in the track bed of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Those tracks ran parallel to but a few blocks below our home.  We regularly went to the tracks, to watch the trains, wave to the engineers, and shout to them to "toot your horn" (which almost invariably they did).  But we did more.  We gathered up what we thought might be real diamonds-in-the-making.  Then we took those to a local jeweler.

That gentleman was kind enough to indulge our imaginations.  Each time we brought him our trove, he got out his jeweler's loup and used it to study our finds.  Only after careful examination of same did he, gently, break the news to us that what we'd found weren't diamonds, nor on the way to becoming same.

I don't remember the jeweler's name, or that of his shop.  I do remember, fondly, those trips to the lower part of Braddock Avenue, and our consulting with our own personal gemologist.

Small things, small things ...